Reubin Askew, Former Florida Governor

It was apparent from the start that this governor would be different. He did not drink, smoke or swear, was a Presbyterian elder and projected a strong sense of morality. “We served no alcohol for eight years in the Governor’s Mansion,” he recalled in a 2006 interview with FloridaTrend.com. “I always laughed and said you’d be surprised how early people go home when you don’t give them any alcohol.”

Floridatrend.com has Former Florida Gov. Reubin Askew dies at 85 Askew was one of the most popular and effective governors in Florida history and a fiercely determined advocate for tax reform, racial equality, managed growth and ethical government.

While the Legislature resisted his ideas for education reforms and for a consumer advocate, the governor protected environmentally fragile lands, restricted coastal construction and blocked oceanfront casinos. He also began to integrate state government, starting with the Highway Patrol. He named blacks to state commissions and boards, and supported proposals to bus children to desegregate public schools. Re-elected in a 1974 landslide, he appointed the first black justice of the Florida Supreme Court and the first black since Reconstruction to head a state agency. He pushed for ethics-in-government laws. When legislators balked, he took the issue to the voters, who overwhelmingly backed financial disclosures by public officials and barred former officials from lobbying their agencies for two years.

 In 1981, he began exploring a run for the Democratic presidential nomination. He visited all 50 states and announced his candidacy in 1983, billing himself as “a different Democrat.” A Harvard study called him one of the century’s 10 best state leaders, along with Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.

Reubin O’Donovan Askew was born on Sept. 11, 1928, in Muskogee, Okla., the youngest of six children of Leon and Alberta Askew. His father, a carpenter, was an alcoholic, and his mother divorced him and moved the brood to her hometown, Pensacola, Fla., in 1937. She was a waitress, seamstress and hotel maid, and Reubin shined shoes, bagged groceries and delivered newspapers to help support the family. He attended Christian Science services with his mother, but later became a Presbyterian.